Siena College Service-Learning Project at SCHS

Education is a key component of our mission. We present a variety of programming aimed at educating the public, including our school programs aimed at K-12 students. We also regularly host interns to give to college and graduate students invaluable work experience. This year, we had an opportunity to go beyond our usual education work and influence the next generation of historians, teachers, journalists, and creators by inviting Siena College students for a unique behind-the-scenes look at the work of our institution!

Professor Jenn Dorsey approached SCHS with an idea for her Spring Introduction to Public History students to do service-learning projects with Marietta Carr, Librarian, and Mike Diana, Director of Education. Service-learning is a vital piece of the Siena College’s curriculum and something that Professor Dorsey incorporates into her history classes. She views service-learning as a way for her students to practice historical thinking, engage with the history of the Capital Region, and support local cultural institutions like SCHS. 

Students worked with historic photos and maps like this view of Wall St.

For this Public History class, Marietta, Mike, and Prof. Dorsey developed 5 projects that gave students hands-on experience in processing, preserving, and describing archival materials, and using primary sources to develop historical narratives. During March of this year, the Siena students worked with Marietta and the library volunteers to transcribe 19^th century legal documents, create metadata for early 20^th century photos, create condition reports for archival materials in the Grems-Doolittle Library, and compose descriptions for our small manuscript collections. Their work will be incorporated into future NY Heritage and Consider the Source NY digital collections, enable greater access to our archival collections, and improve the information available in our online catalog and resources. In April, the students researched buildings on State and Union Streets and composed narratives that Mike will utilize in developing future walking tours.

Digitizing documents, like this drawing from the Patents Collection, was an essential part of the students' work.

The students approached their work at SCHS with great enthusiasm. They were eager to apply the concepts they’d covered earlier in the semester and learn the basics of archival processing. For most of the students, this was their first time directly handling original archival materials or working in a special collections library. Many of these students are considering careers in the history field, and this experience provided a glimpse into a possible future career. We’re grateful for the work these students produced and the opportunity to contribute their education!